GoPro Challenge

A large part of our time was spent in dealing with GoPro cameras. Yes, we’re using them in ways they are not necessarily intended for. But that hasn’t been the problem. We were all new to GoPro Hero 5 Black, which is significantly different from the Hero 3 which I used in Passages II: Inhabiting the North. And, as always, GoPro documentation is poor even though it has improved. For future reference:

The zoom and framing is done digitally not optically (da!) and calculated from the center of the frame (double da!) even though a lot of the charts that are circulating out there that compare the resolution in different modes (superwide, wide, narrow, medium, linear) start from corner (WTF?!)

Figuring out what FOV (field of view) was available in what shooting mode (video, photo, time lapse video, time lapse photo) was a real challenge.

GoPro Studio software does NOT remove the fisheye effect from video footage because, I guess, they expect you’d do it in camera (don’t do it in camera because you lose a lot of the image field)

The LCD display (the pride of Hero 5) does NOT show the actual image being recorded in the file (WTF!), so in Linear or 4:3 modes you just have to guess when framing and cross your fingers that you get it right.

The way to deal with these:

Shoot 4k video in wide mode (the only option) and deal with all the cropping and fisheye correction in post through a third party software. I’m researching that now.